Client Case Studies

Many agencies obsess over response metrics, paying little attention to cost per acquisition or the lifetime value of the customer. Our mission is to constantly find new ways to make our clients’ campaigns even more profitable, because scale isn’t possible without a healthy bottom line.

This fast-growing meal-kit delivery service had optimized its digital, TV and radio advertising, and wanted to test direct mail as a scaling opportunity. SeQuel developed a FaQtor Test matrix that included four creative concepts, seven data models, 10 vertical files and five offers during a three-month test phase, leveraging integrated branding and imagery to match the client's existing TV spots.

13K

Acquired 13,000 new customers in first test

30

Campaign was cash-positive after just 30 days

.7%

Overall sales rate is exceeding .7%

$64

Best test cell achieving a CPA of $64

Even if you already have excellent brand recognition and a robust presence in digital and broadcast media, adding a sophisticated direct mail program will complement and augment your growth in those other channels. And even if you don't embrace direct mail until late in the game, it still has the ability to provide staggering levels of incremental sales that you would have otherwise forgone.

A leading home warranty provider was investing heavily in digital advertising channels but needed to quickly increase its acquisition numbers in order to meet aggressive growth goals. The client had never tested direct mail, and the marketing department had limited knowledge of the channel but agreed to run a small “gut-check” mailing to measure its viability as an acquisition tool. SeQuel tested two new models, one creative concept and one offer in a modest initial test of just 100,000 pieces.

.8%

Initial test achieved an overall sales rate of .8%

$85

Test achieved an average CPA of $85

4.3x

Overall ROI for the first test was 4.3x

5x

The client increased mail volume by 5x for the follow-up campaign

The gut check was a nice first step to prove that this product could grow rapidly in the mail, and it didn’t require much time, investment or risk for the brand. This effort is also proof that you can be profitable in an initial test, and even achieve an overall campaign CPA under $90—though the best test cell showed a CPA of about half that. Now, in the expanded follow-up test, it’s a matter of drilling down and analyzing which variables are having the greatest relative impact on performance, so that the client can optimize performance and scale ASAP.

A leading credit-score optimization service had hit a growth ceiling in digital channels and wanted to test direct mail as an acquisition tool. SeQuel tested a pair of creative concepts, six lists and two offers in the initial FaQtor Test matrix.

$20

Best test cell achieving a $20 CPA

$50

Overall campaign CPA is under $50

4x

Test beat performance goal by 4x

This is a great example of how strong performance can be when you can get a great product in front of the perfect audience. Direct mail's data targeting, model building, etc., are still the most sophisticated strategies for reaching your ideal customer.

It creates a deadly combination when you can effectively merge the unmatched power of terrestrial data targeting with the cost-effectiveness of digital media, and it results in big-time cross-channel performance synergies for our clients.

One of the country’s largest debt-settlement companies had maxed out all digital growth opportunities and wanted to test direct mail as a way of finding more scale. SeQuel's strategists developed a FaQtor Test matrix that included four creative concepts and a dozen list sources over a three-month test window, also testing for optimal mailing frequency.

39x

Achieving a campaign ROI of 39x

22k

Campaign generated 22,000 new customers in Year One

1/6

Direct mail now generates one-sixth of the client's new business

$1B

Onboarding $1 billion in new debt per year via the mail

SeQuel opened the door to an entirely new revenue channel for us and held our hand through every step of that journey—they’re truly an extension of our internal marketing team. Thanks to SeQuel’s proven direct mail strategies and insights, our brand is enjoying explosive growth. SeQuel’s performance and service model are the gold standard, and SeQuel is now the benchmark by which all of our current and prospective agency partners are measured.

A multinational bank tapped SeQuel to develop and execute a digital media strategy targeting small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), with the goal of efficiently driving traffic and conversions on campaign-specific landing pages.

Armed with a set of television and banner ads featuring success stories of SMBs the client has financed through its business banking solutions group, SeQuel built a campaign plan that leaned heavily on the highly targeted video-delivery capabilities of YouTube and Facebook.

The SeQuel digital team synthesized a variety of targeting tactics designed to pinpoint SMB owners in the designated market areas (DMAs) relevant to the client's branch locations, including behavioral (in-market for business financial services), interests, company size, geographic and language segmentation.

The client, a fully-accredited nonprofit teaching and research institution offering multiple health & wellness degrees and certificate programs, was looking to boost its enrollments, but its existing digital marketing agency was struggling to cost-effectively fill its enrollment pipeline with the necessary volume of prospective students. To supplement the shortage of leads, the university had been forced to purchase leads from third-party aggregators, which came with high costs and low downstream conversion rates.

Upon being awarded the account, SeQuel optimized the university’s paid-search accounts while introducing digital channels that would build essential top-of-funnel awareness in the geographies most relevant to the institution. This included targeting prospects across massively scaled audience platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter and the Google Display Network. SeQuel also wrote and designed program-specific creative across all platforms, created program-specific landing pages, introduced a compelling content asset offer, and developed blog content for the university’s website regarding career opportunities in natural medicine, which was used in the Facebook campaign as an efficient and effective strategy for building an engaged retargeting audience.

Attendance at a critical on-campus pre-admission event increased by 85%

57%

Local inquiries increased by 57%

72%

Campaign generates 72% of all new inquiries

7

The university welcomed its largest incoming class in seven years

The conversations we’ve had with the people at SeQuel have been very different from those with our prior agency. SeQuel’s team is very strategic, and they’ve been extremely responsive to the questions we’ve had. When SeQuel began managing our digital lead-generation campaign, we felt the impact almost immediately. They delivered on their promise to deliver a higher volume of qualified inquiries at a dramatically lower cost, and we’re connecting with these prospective students at a much higher rate, which has eliminated our need to purchase non-branded leads from aggregators. Thanks to SeQuel, we have more demonstrated interest in our institution than ever before.

A leading specialty insurer had tried direct mail previously, but the campaign wasn’t producing growth at a speed or scale that could justify further investment in the channel. From a digital perspective, the client was running a modest paid search campaign, but wasn’t engaging in any acquisition-based digital marketing. SeQuel developed weekly direct mail drops for the five months leading up to peak usage season, along with synchronized digital strategies that included email, Facebook, blogging, display, and landing-page optimization.

SeQuel helps us keep setting the bar higher and higher. I especially value their ability to quickly see trends and adjust. I am not worried about constantly watching results when I know SeQuel has tabs on it. I’m very grateful to their entire team for being such great partners.

This insurer had recently experienced a 20% decline in annual premium, desired a structured retention strategy, and faced an inflated cost-per-acquisition due to out-of-control production & postage costs. SeQuel took the reins, optimized the campaign finances, tested more than 400 data files, built over a dozen models and developed 50-plus creative concepts.

25%

Acquisition sales rate increased 25%

38%

Revenue-per-policy rose 38%

Annual postage/production costs cut by 20% ($1.8M)

4x

Annual premium jumped nearly 4x

SeQuel’s people are direct marketing pros and trusted resources. They’re very diligent about constructing appropriate test offers—they make sure we’re never complacent! SeQuel makes strategic recommendations based on achieving profitability and CPA goals. They are true professionals and a pleasure to work with.

This identity-theft protection service advertised heavily across broadcast channels, but had never tried direct marketing, and feared it was missing out on a potent sales driver. SeQuel built the program from scratch, populating 16 test cells in the initial matrix with various offers, creative concepts and list files, generating 180 cells of indexed data.

11x

Indexing yielded 11x more data than an A/B test

3.7x

Response rate multiplied 3.7x since '12

Volume rose from 2M pieces in ‘10 to 130M in '16

40%

Channel helps generate 40% of annual sales

DM now the lowest CPA among marketing channels

The team at SeQuel is incredible—irreplaceable to the nth degree. They have a customer-centric focus, which is very apparent in all of the work that they do. Their willingness to be flexible—nothing could stand in their way. I couldn’t have done my job to the same level of expertise and success without that team behind me.

A leading specialty insurer was having a difficult time converting prospects who had phoned their call center to receive a quote. SeQuel developed a nimble weekly hotline mailing—every Monday, the client pulls a file of last week’s hot leads, and SeQuel mails a targeted piece by Thursday of that week.

15%

Program achieving a 15% sales rate

Campaign creating $1.9M/year in top-line revenue

13%

Revenue-per-purchase beating acquisition campaign by 13%

We’ve had an incredible amount of success remarketing to responder/non-converter audiences, and we’re certainly pleased that the functionality was created to capture these records for this client. The resulting remarketing campaign is delivering the highest ROI of any of their campaigns by far.

A prominent not-for-profit health insurer wanted to develop a direct marketing campaign for a new pre-Medicare individual product. Without an existing control package, SeQuel began testing to establish the most responsive and cost-effective combination of data, message, offer, format and creative concepts.

5/5

All five concepts beat CPA goal

57%

Winner beat CPA goal by 57%

2x

Winner doubled response rate goal

Rollout ROI: $5.75/1

On time. On budget. Needle-moving results. It’s what you need from a direct marketing partner. It’s what I got with SeQuel. If you’re looking for a partner to help you get the most from your budget, you need to talk to the folks at SeQuel Response.

A fast-growing home-security company approached SeQuel to launch its direct marketing program with goals of generating six-figure annual sales. In a three-month test period, SeQuel tested five different models, 16 affinity files, three offers and three unique creative concepts—generating 189 indexed test cells.

2x

Sales rate doubled since first campaign

Generating thousands of sales a month

Built two new control concepts in 2015

Budgeted eight-figure volume in 2016

SeQuel helped us launch direct mail from zero to a major revenue channel in a matter of months. Their expertise has been invaluable, from data to production to creative. They are a pleasure to work with, they work hard for us, and we trust them wholeheartedly with our business.

An insurer wanted to optimize a retention program that was targeting past customers on a one-size-fits-all basis. SeQuel launched a CRM strategy that segmented past customers based on customer RFM data (recency/frequency/monetary). We then tested communication timing, frequency and creative, and applied learnings across segments.

10%

Creative tests boosted sales rate 10%

21%

Revenue-per-policy up 21%

3x

Annual policies nearly tripled

224K new multi-buyer customers

8x

Customer lifetime value multiplied by 8x

SeQuel’s strategists are timely and thorough in their analysis, and always offer a clear and professional explanation for their recommendations/rationale. They seek to truly understand our business, and offer new ideas for partnerships or other marketing opportunities that go beyond direct mail.

After experiencing early success in direct marketing tests, this identity-theft protection service wanted to increase its prospect universe without hurting response in phase two of testing. SeQuel sought to target more ideal prospects by customizing multiple competing regression models, and introducing optimal vertical files.

25%

New list source for responder model boosted response 25%

Data enhancements have produced 75% of control files

400K

DM helps produce over 400k new sales a year

65x

Volume has increased 65x in six years since launch

1/2

CPA cut in half since launch

SeQuel is the largest single member-generating agency channel in the company. When we need something, we can depend on them to execute, and execute with a very high standard of quality. They’ve been extremely instrumental in new-member acquisition, such that we wouldn’t have been able to hit the numbers that we did without them.

After engaging in direct marketing for about a year, an international fraternal benefits organization had seen a 70% decline in enrollment rate, and wanted to reach 100,000 new enrollments by year-end. SeQuel built a matrix that tested two unique offers and three different creative concepts, and also developed an email/postcard follow-up strategy.

91%

Increased overall sales rates by 91%

Winning creative/offer combo beat sales rate by 114%

51%

Reduced cost-per-registration by 51%

Acquired 83% more members with 5% smaller mail volume

6%

Finished 6% under budget

Given some sizable performance goals, we were allowed to test rather broadly in our first campaign, and it paid significant dividends. Not only did we find a more effective creative and offer—the overall campaign nearly doubled the enrollment expectation set by prior efforts. This campaign breaks the mold a bit, in that the offer is free, but the audience is static. So it has been fun constantly tinkering with new offers and creative concepts to find effective ways to engage the audience.

In this pilot direct marketing test, SeQuel developed a program strategy rooted in fractional multivariate testing. We ultimately developed three unique concepts, a campaign-specific landing page, plus six unique prospect lists, including one customer lookalike model.

As part of an ongoing creative testing strategy, this insurer asked SeQuel to continue to test and back test new concepts on a monthly basis. Dating back to 2010, SeQuel has tested a total of 50 unique acquisition concepts, successfully unseating control with a new package every 10 to 14 months.

25%

Net sales rate boost of 25%

45%

Cumulative 45% reduction in CPA

Built new control concept in 5-straight years

Most direct marketing campaigns fail for one reason: they get tired. Marketers rely on control creatives with perhaps the occasional A/B test, and before you know it, fatigue has set in, and the campaign is in peril. We fight that complacency with a commitment to ongoing creative testing, even if we just beat the control last month, or if performance is already strong. Doing so has consistently delivered winners, enabling us to stay well ahead of any performance drop-off.

With multiple prospect streams feeding a fast-growing direct marketing program, it became necessary to more actively manage contact frequency and timing. But rather than merely looking back at whom we’d already targeted, we built and populated a database that allows SeQuel and the client to more proactively manage future contact strategies and data drill-downs.

200

Tracks over 200 variables for analysis

125M

Contact history on over 125M records

Columnar file maximizes data variety & speed

They went to incredible lengths to get our campaigns completed and out the door on time. All the late-night phone calls that they’re willing to take—they were invaluable. Nothing could stand in their way, and I think that really sets the SeQuel team apart from any other agency I’ve ever interacted with.

Several years of working a relatively static marketing universe was causing this insurer’s response rates, sales volume and profitability to deteriorate. SeQuel began testing three to five new vertical/affinity files per month, built custom responder/affinity/publisher models, and targeted perimeter prospect segments.

38%

Increased revenue-per-sale by 38%

81%

Lifted premium-per-piece by 81%

Acquisition profitability rose 20%

4x

Annual mail volume grew 4x

Time and time again we learn that data is king. By continually testing new files of all types, we were able to not only boost sales rates, but also provide significant scale within profitability metrics. The campaign has grown 4x, and list testing was the primary driver. When we found a winning list, we just had to decide whether it would replace the lowest on the totem pole, or just bolt on. It’s been a compelling growth story.

-Scott Anderson, SeQuel's VP of Data & Analytics

It’s your turn

Our clients won’t settle for inefficient testing methodologies, shallow analytics or under-performing controls, and neither will you. But partnering with SeQuel isn’t just best for your organization—it’s also best for your career. Many of our clients are being rapidly promoted, because when we perform, you’re the hero.